Tag: argument

The village is amazing, and many people reached out to me regarding Mother’s day plans and for this I am so incredibly grateful…

I answered them mostly in much the same way, “I have very complicated feelings about mother’s day.”

And that’s the truth. I do. My feelings about mother’s day are very complicated. Mostly, maybe because they are overwhelmingly negative. And no one is supposed to feel negatively about mother’s day, right? Especially not when you are a mother, right?

So at the simplest level there is this: Mother’s day is the day when my husband got sick… and never got better. And that was last year.

But there’s more. We spent many mother’s days at the winery where we got married. In 2015 we had a great day there. I had a bit too much to drink, and that night, after we got the girls to bed, Tim and I had the worst fight of our marriage, or our friendship, of all the years we’d known each other. I was very willing to move on from the memory of that low moment. But Mother’s day 2016, when I was 8 months pregnant, he “had to work” and I took the girls there alone, and met my friends with my pregnant belly for a day at the vineyard. Last year, even before he got sick, he told me he didn’t want to go…. that he couldn’t go there on Mother’s day and remember the lowest point of our relationship. And I was incredibly moved. I was a little bitter, that he was making my holiday about his feelings… but I was also moved that that lowest point in our relationship had such an effect on him.

So last year, I didn’t have a lot planned. Maybe Peterson’s (ice cream) in the afternoon. The girls had swim lessons in the morning.. When he asked me what I wanted for Mother’s day I said…. to sleep in, to get time in the bathroom alone.
I was running low on my perfume. If he could order some more on Amazon that would be great. Maybe it would be great to get another family photo shoot, since the last was in October when Declan was only 3 months old… but it was probably too late for that… He told me I’d get a Mother’s day do-over. He was so incredibly sorry for being sick and not helping with the kids at all all weekend.

But I will never get that Mother’d day do-over. Although honestly, people take a lot of the logistics off my hands. And I have often thought, I’d take all the hard stuff and the exhaustion of the day-to-day, for just one more day with my Tim. But that is not meant to be.

And I often wonder – was I bitter? Or did he think I was? I’d hate for him to have thought that…. there was a text from him that weekend where he thought I was ignoring him and said “I know you’re mad at me but..” And in telegram there is no response to that… but I know I went up to our bedroom and saw him and said “I’m not mad, hun, I’m just tired, and busy. with the kids.. what do you need?” It just makes me hope I wasn’t bitter.

And maybe there’e also the what-ifs. The what-ifs that I try my best to chase away but creep in. What if it wasn’t mothers day but a regular weekend – maybe then he would have given me more details? What if not wanting to burden me on Mother’s Day weekend made him hold back details of how he was feeling that would have raised my red flags sooner, or given me critical information to help the doctors make a diagnosis sooner? What if it being Mother’s day was the problem?

Tonight I went to see the movie Tully with two mom-friends. And in the end, it made me feel better. I don’t remember feeling bitter exactly, but if I did, it was no more than the average new mother with a baby who doesn’t sleep through the night. I loved him. He knew that. No matter if I was exhausted that weekend, no matter if we had that terrible fight in 2015. He knew how much I loved and was dedicated to him, always. I showed it in life, and I show it now.

Maybe some day I will feel differently about Mother’s day, but for now, and for my children, I will grin and survive it, just like I do every day.

Recently, though, I was reminded of the concept of infidelity. And that in some cultures or circles in the world, and even in the U.S., much as I hate to admit it, its accepted…overlooked… ignored for men to be unfaithful, and not respect women.

Being married to Tim, it’s easy to forget that exists. The way he was, the people he surrounded himself with…

Tim and I were both terribly passionate, opinionated, stubborn people. We argued about everything. Sometimes, he felt I argued just to argue. Maybe he was right.

The last argument I remember us having was about the car keys. Or rather, about me lying about them.

To explain: the keys to our SUV – which I primarily drive – had remote access keys. This allows you to start the car, lock, unlock, open the back hatch without getting the key out of your bag, pocket etc., as long as it is close by. But this feature requires good, working batteries. Ours were both going, so we bought the new batteries, and I asked Tim to change them – he did it the last time, looked it up on YouTube, etc. Weeks, then MONTHS went by where he didn’t do it and I was losing my mind. With three kids in and out of that car all the time, the remote key was soooo missed, having to get it out to start or lock the car was driving me crazy. And I just didn’t feel like figuring it out to do it myself. I finally got tired of waiting and just stopped at a Battery place near work and had it done. I didn’t tell him mostly because I thought it would be entertaining to see how long before he noticed.

When he found out, he was livid. I mean absolutely temper tantrum angry.

His reason – not that I had done this, but that I hadn’t told him. I had purposely not told him. I had lied. If I could do that, what else could I lie about, what else could I hide? “It’s a slippery slope.”

Remembering this now I smile. A sad, ironic smile… but still.

This was my marriage. We fought about silly stuff, but never in a million years could I believe he’d cheat on me. And now that I have access to his entire personal, physical and digital life, I know that to be true even more. Nothing I found surprised me. And he certainly had no time to prepare!

He was one of the best. One of the good guys. His love for me, his remarkable, unwavering moral compass. His desire for the world to be a better place for his children. His desire for equality and social justice.

Yes, I was robbed of the life I planned. But I know I am also in a way, one of the lucky ones.